Category: Writing Journey

Brock. Brock Allen Turner. Brock, if I had you sitting here in my kitchen right now, I’d be looking straight into your immature, selfish eyes. I wouldn’t have to look far, though, Brock, because there is no depth to you. Your entire existence could be summed up in less time than your measly jail sentence. There would be no affect in my voice when the words started flowing. I wouldn’t be able to give you the strength that anger takes because that strength was taken a long time ago. The thing is, Brock, I don’t write about every single current event, or every injustice that makes its way to the newsreel. Just the ones that really hit home.

I hadn’t heard of you until a few days ago, but I knew your story before it was published all over the news. It doesn’t really surprise me that you got your rocks off behind a dumpster after trying; after FAILING, to find a girl at the party who would go home with you. How many times were you pushed away and turned down that night? Did you think it was OWED to you? Here’s the thing, Brock. Until now, you haven’t been owed anything. But now I’m going to tell you what you deserve, and what I hope you get.

Unlike most people, I am not enraged by your six month jail sentence. You’re going to spend six months behind bars. You’ll be a happy little snowflake back in the arms of your parents come Christmas. But after that jail time, what you don’t know now, is that your real sentence is going to begin.

It is a good thing that you’ve got a strong swimmer’s body, Brock, because for the rest of your life you’re going to be carrying around a lot of weight. You are going to carry the shame of being an insecure boy who felt the need to use a woman’s body against her will. You steal goods from a store, you can pay that back. You steal a woman’s security and sense of self, and you are forever indebted. FOREVER. Your family had the money to pay for a great lawyer (a miracle worker, it seems) but they, or you, will never have the currency to pay for this. You are going to hold on to the burden of being a criminal for the rest of your life.You’ll carry around the fact that you now know true evil, because what you did is TRUE EVIL.

You DESERVE to be looked at like you’re the scum in the depths ofa rotted, damp sewer. You deserve to be deprived of intimacy and true love. Oh, but I hope you get a taste of it and then it gets wretched out of your filthy hands. You deserve to be branded, Scarlet Letter style, with an R on your forehead. Thankfully, social media has given us the next best thing. You deserve to experience what your victim experienced, and yet, I hope you never have to. Someday, maybe I can write about how I know that the torture you instilled on that girl is far too much of a punishment for even you, but not today. I can’t do it today. You deserve to know that although you took her when she was down, you could never ever take her when she is strong. And she is going to be strong again, Brock. She is. She made us all a little stronger because she stood up to you. Your jail sentence may be small, but the strength of all of the people who stand behind your victim is nothing shy of monumental.

I am snugly nestled among friends in the musty basement of a stranger, we drink Bud Light beneath a haze of smoke and thumping music-will we be discovered or enjoy another night of teenage freedom? For now, we are safely disobedient.